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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24265657">Dear father with the boring science stuff</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/forevermint/pseuds/choppedmint'>choppedmint (forevermint)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The Road Not Taken [11]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Morganville Vampires - Rachel Caine</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Historical, Gen, Historical References</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 23:20:13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,695</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24265657</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/forevermint/pseuds/choppedmint</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
      <p>This story was rewritten and polished. You can read it: [here] (TBA)</p><p>Slight note that this story includes a different ending. It is not necessarily considered a canon ending for this series of stories.</p>
    </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The Road Not Taken [11]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1558276</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Dear father with the boring science stuff</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">


        <li>
            Inspired by

            <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24265885">It is Dark Here</a> by <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/forevermint/pseuds/choppedmint">choppedmint (forevermint)</a>.
        </li>

    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This story was rewritten and polished. You can read it: [here] (TBA)</p><p>Slight note that this story includes a different ending. It is not necessarily considered a canon ending for this series of stories.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He was eight. It was dark, evening really. He should have been asleep. But it was highly likely that<br/>
anyone who should have been monitoring him didn’t know he was awake. His father and his work<br/>
partner, Kelly, had walked down the hall, talking adamantly. Arthur had woken, hearing them, and<br/>
exited his room. He looked down from the top of the stairs, hands clashed around the railing.<br/>
Neither man noticed him.<br/>
The house was big and unfamiliar. This was just another visit to a country that Arthur couldn’t<br/>
pronounce. Kelly was there because he went everywhere with father and mother. His own wife was<br/>
around, Arthur assumed, but he had yet to see her. As it was, he practically had the whole upper<br/>
floor to himself other than the scattering of servants.<br/>
That’s what made where his father and Kelly were going all the more interesting. He stumbled<br/>
down the stairs in a rush, making more noise than he would have liked. But his dad and Kelly were<br/>
in such animate conversation down the hall that Arthur got away with the creaking and the<br/>
clattering of every step. He was also in a position to hear a bit better what they were saying.<br/>
“-understand it. The wound isn’t healing, he says. Which is preposterous. It’s too far gone. But<br/>
why would he think this would somehow help?” This said by Kelly.<br/>
Arthur crept after them, head low. By this time, they’d gone too far from his room for him to<br/>
actually be there for any other reason other than following his father. He moved slower, unable to<br/>
hide. If his dad or Kelly looked back, Arthur would be there. He almost breathed a sigh of relief<br/>
when they turned into a room. His muscles relaxed, but he didn’t dare breath. He could still hear<br/>
both men’s voices, but there was another, more strained set of vocal cords now.<br/>
Arthur moved closer, pressing himself up against the door and his eye to the crack in the door.<br/>
There was just barely a sliver of room beyond. He could see the back of his father and Kelly’s<br/>
shoulder. The full head and shoulders of another man was also visible. This confused Arthur for a<br/>
second before he realized the man was half sitting and half lying down on a table, lit by candles.<br/>
His legs weren’t visible, but from the way he was holding out his hands it looked like he was<br/>
clutching the knee of one leg.<br/>
“Hurts like the blazes,” he said, breathing out through his nose. This practically confirmed it for<br/>
Arthur. Kelly and his dad were sorts of doctors. They’d sometimes treated people before.<br/>
He was sure he hadn’t made a noise, but suddenly the man’s eyes darted over to the door. The<br/>
lighting in the room was bad. It was hard for Arthur to make out many of the man’s features.<br/>
Disheveled, hair uncut and unwashed. A tangle of a beard, though it wasn’t much of an impressive<br/>
one. His hair looked black, but that might have been the grime. It made his other features – his pale<br/>
skin and green eyes – stand out more.<br/>
Arthur would have reeled back from the door, frightened back to his room … but then one of the<br/>
man’s eyes closed. A wink.<br/>
Then it was like nothing had ever happened and he was back to focusing on Kelly and Arthur’s<br/>
father. “Well?”<br/>
“Well,” said Kelly, sounding vaguely annoyed. “We got what you wanted, though I don’t see how<br/>
it’s going to help.”<br/>
“It will,” said the other man with a pained sigh. “Just … mix that, that, and that into it.” He seemed<br/>
to randomly point around the room with his free hand. Arthur couldn’t see that deep into the room<br/>
– there were candles set near the front of the room, but none directly next to the man – the light<br/>
didn’t stretch that far. But Kelly’s face had come into enough view that Arthur could tell he was<br/>
thinking the same thing; the man had just pointed randomly around the room. There was no point<br/>
to it, or so they both assumed.<br/>
But he did what the man said, with limited grumbling, and Arthur now say a pewter bowl in his<br/>
hands, silver powder just visible in it. “Does that satisfy you, My Lord?” he asked, a mix of<br/>
patronizing and respectful that only Kelly could pull off.<br/>
“Very,” said the man. One of his eyes were twitching. “Bring it here.” Kelly pushing the bowl in<br/>
his direction.<br/>
The man spat into the bowl. Kelly looked into it with a bit of curiosity now, eyebrows raised. He<br/>
passed the bowl over to Arthur’s father, who took it.<br/>
“Huuum, hold up,” said the man. “Anyone have a piece of cloth?” He looked at both men, who<br/>
shook their heads. Kelly was looking confused. The man briefly glanced back toward Arthur, as if<br/>
he was asking him as well, but maybe took the fear in Arthur’s eyes as confirmation he had no such<br/>
thing.<br/>
“Disgusting,” he said with a sigh. From somewhere on his person he pulled a rag, which looked<br/>
like it had been burned around the edges and then used to wipe up the soot. He stuck it in his<br/>
mouth, grimacing more than he had been already. Then he waved a hand at men, who took this as<br/>
an excuse to proceed.<br/>
Finally, Arthur’s father stepped a bit to the side. Enough that the boy could get a look at the man’s<br/>
leg. The pants had been torn and underneath it there looked like …<br/>
Arthur wanted to be sick, but he settled for gripping the wall with one hand. It looked like … it<br/>
looked very bad. It would have been the point where the leg would have been better removed<br/>
altogether. What had happened to that poor man? There was no way that this concoction could<br/>
help. Arthur had never heard of such a thing happening that could mend the body that much.<br/>
He pressed an eye back to the crack when he heard a muffled scream. What he saw was both<br/>
terrifying and … amazing. The scream was because the powder, wherever it touched, seemed to<br/>
burn like acid. The bleeding stopped in that place, and then slowly … so slowly it was something<br/>
he almost missed, it started to heal!<br/>
New skin forming, slowly returning the man’s leg to its healthy form. It looked like the man was<br/>
in a fair amount of pain, but … but his leg was healing! It was impossible!<br/>
Arthur was practically pressing himself into the door now, hardly able to keep quiet. What was that<br/>
powder? How was it made? How did the man know how to make it?<br/>
The bowl was still mostly full, and Arthur’s father was about to apply more when the man reached<br/>
out and blocked the bowl with a hand. Some powder flaked off onto his hands. Like his leg, the<br/>
places where the powder touched burned and then healed over.<br/>
The man spat out the rag. It looked older and more worn than usual now. “Enough,” he hissed, still<br/>
looking in pain. “That’s enough.”<br/>
Kelly was frowning at the bowl. “Didn’t burn me when I touched it … it’s just silver flakes and all<br/>
that other stuff.”<br/>
The man’s eyes narrowed for just a second and then, still gripping what looked to be a mostly<br/>
healed leg, said, “Weeeeell … what do you think?”<br/>
Kelly turned away after a second, holding a book when he returned. “You looked in here before<br/>
sending us off for the silver. Why?”<br/>
The man shifted himself to a full seated position, fingers probing the pale and whole flesh of his<br/>
leg. “Had to check it was going to work, did not I?”<br/>
“You can read this?” asked Kelly, opening the book to what looked like a random page. “What<br/>
language is it?”<br/>
“Hum?” said the man, for some reason looking mildly insulted. “Do not remember anymore. And<br/>
no, you cannot have the book.”<br/>
Arthur wondered just how well this man had read Kelly. Even he could see the greed in his eyes.<br/>
“Thank you, gentleman, for your assistance,” the man said. “But I really must be going.” He<br/>
manhandled the book from Kelly’s grip before slipping off the table he’d been on. He hustled<br/>
toward the door, his body blocking Kelly’s view of Arthur.<br/>
“The powder –“ Arthur’s father started to ask, but the man waved a dismissive hand. “Keep it.”<br/>
The door was opened, Arthur pressed to the wall behind it. His heart beat so fast in his chest at the<br/>
immediate chance of discovery. But the man closed the door firmly behind him, cutting off the<br/>
chance that Kelly or Arthur’s father would follow.<br/>
“Come on boy,” he muttered. “Leg it. That horrible man’s probably cackling about stealing one of<br/>
these pages before he asked the stupid question. May it do him good.” He sniffed, like he doubted<br/>
Kelly could do much.<br/>
The man was already hurrying down the hallway, Arthur half frozen in his steps. But then, he<br/>
unfroze and raised after him. It was his only chance, after all. “How’d that happen?” he asked,<br/>
already gasping.<br/>
The man had tucked the book somewhere out of sight. But then he looked down at Arthur, through<br/>
the tangle of hair. “The poison on my leg needed to be burned away before it could heal. Then it<br/>
was the powder that healed it.”<br/>
Arthur wasn’t good at telling lies just yet, but the man was telling him what he wanted to hear, so<br/>
it wasn’t that hard to swallow the partial truth.<br/>
Arthur’s eyes widened, and the boy paused. The man picked up speed.<br/>
Arthur rushed after him, but the man never slowed as he headed for the exit. “How did you learn<br/>
all that stuff?” There was a sharp turn of the man’s head and the green eyes looked down at Arthur.<br/>
“Perhaps ask your father to teach you. I learned ‘that stuff’ just as he is learning now.”<br/>
Then he was speed walking away and Arthur was too out of breath to catch up and ask any further<br/>
questions.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>ORIGIN "Entranced: Dear father with the boring science stuff": The original idea for this<br/>was just a filler story about Arthur learning from his father. But just as intense prompts can<br/>become filler, so can filler become more than that. I was looking through the wiki pages<br/>again, which I sometimes poke at for Arthur. And I stumbled across about a sentence on<br/>why Arthur became interested in alchemy. Now, while wiki could be inaccurate or not, I<br/>figured it made for a good story. And roughly, the story is told above. Only the man of<br/>unknown origin is, in fact, Myrnin. Then a Lord and with a bit more interest about him.<br/>Arthur, of course, is far too young to truly remember him into adulthood. But there might<br/>have been enough familiarity to poke at both their interests.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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